14 ([return])
[ Pliny and others confirm this strange paradox, that provisions laid up against sieges will continue good for a hundred years, as Spanheim notes upon this place.]
15 ([return])
[ The speeches in this and the next section, as introduced under the person of this Eleazar, are exceeding remarkable, and of the noblest subjects, the contempt of death, and the dignity and immortality of the soul; and that not only among the Jews, but among the Indians themselves also; and are highly worthy the perusal of all the curious. It seems as if that philosophic lady who survived, ch. 9. sect. 1, 2, remembered the substance of these discourses, as spoken by Eleazar, and so Josephus clothed them in his own words: at the lowest they contain the Jewish notions on these heads, as understood then by our Josephus, and cannot but deserve a suitable regard from us.]
16 ([return])
[ See B. II. ch. 20. sect. 2, where the number of the slain is but 10,000.]
17 ([return])
[ Reland here sets down a parallel aphorism of one of the Jewish Rabbins, "We are born that we may die, and die that we may live.">[
18 ([return])
[ Since Josephus here informs us that some of these Sicarii, or ruffians, went from Alexandria [which was itself in Egypt, in a large sense] into Egypt, and Thebes there situated, Reland well observes, from Vossius, that Egypt sometimes denotes Proper or Upper Egypt, as distinct from the Delta, and the lower parts near Palestine. Accordingly, as he adds, those that say it never rains in Egypt must mean the Proper or Upper Egypt, because it does sometimes rain in the other parts. See the note on Antiq. B. II. ch. 7. sect. 7, and B. III. ch. 1. sect. 6.]